Better To Mind The Public Business Than Obsess On Private Affairs

May 17, 1992|By Charley Reese of The Sentinel Staff

Personally, I don't see much difference in men who aren't women wearing women's clothes and men who aren't cowboys wearing cowboy clothes. In both cases, it seems the people enjoy pretending to be what they are not.

More to the point, what people do in their private affairs, as long as they don't use force or exploit children, is none of our business. I've never been tempted to buy a dress, but I have come close to buying a cowboy hat. But I always remind myself that it is silly to buy a hat designed to keep sun and rain off your head when I spend all day in an office. So I don't buy one. But if other people want to wear sombreros, who cares?

One of the absurdities of our society is that so many people expend so much energy worrying about other people's private business they don't have energy left to worry about public business.

Pornographers, for example, exploit sex for commercial purposes - but then, so do a lot of advertising agencies, clothing and cosmetic manufacturers, TV and movie producers, book publishers, and magazine and newspaper editors, including some feminists. When it comes to making a buck with a body, you need a lot of fingers if you're into pointing them. We're talking degrees of sleaze.

But if we mobilized a strike force of 10,000 law enforcement officers and prosecutors, spent $5 billion, and drove pornography underground (that's the choice - above or below the counter), what tangible public good would we accomplish?

Would more people find jobs? Would the banking business suddenly become sound? Would the federal deficit disappear? Would the infrastructure of our cities be suddenly resurrected?

No. We'd probably be stuck with a permanent anti-pornography bureaucracy that would pursue an endless war against pictures of naked people. Would even any human beings who would ordinarily buy pornography be changed? I doubt it. As I pointed out, in today's America, the pornographer faces fierce competition for the titilation and prurient interest dollar.

But people who want to stamp out pornography are not the only ones who have a problem with perspective. There are free-speech fanatics who want to protect pornography, but have no interest at all in the government's massive censorship of information about public affairs.

The U.S. government, more and more often, is saying to the American people, including their elected representatives in Congress: You go to hell; this information is classified. You can't see it.

The Constitution is the top law. The Constitution says Congress and the executive branch are co-equal in authority. So how can the executive branch deny Congress information about activities performed by people whose jobs Congress authorizes and whose activities Congress funds?

Government files hidden behind security classifications may be duller than an X-rated video, but it is far more important, from the standpoint of human liberty, to keep government open and accountable to the people.

Murder and theft and war by deception, committed by public officials with public means in secrecy, constitute true obscenity and represent a real threat to people. Pornography is a marginal issue, a private affair. Better to concentrate on helping children develop in social, physical and psychological good health than to send cops chasing after lonely old men in seedy stores and movie houses. Or worse, play the silly game of paste the pasty on the nipple of some dancer.

In the meantime, true freedom envisioned by our forefathers goes down the drain, the public is ripped off, and the government that is supposed to be our servant becomes our master.

Let's mind, for a change, our public business and leave people's private lives to themselves.